Ghanaian alcohol tycoon Kwabena Adjei is building a 27-storey luxury tower in Accra

Kwabena Adjei, the Ghanaian businessman who built the Alomo Bitters drinks empire, is putting up one of the tallest residential buildings in Ghana through his property company, a twin-tower development in Accra where three-bedroom apartments are priced from $565,000.

The project, Selton Skye, is being built by Capemay Properties, a developer Adjei founded in 2008 and runs as a family business alongside his drinks company, Kasapreko. Excavation and foundation work began in 2025, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, which tracks skyscraper construction worldwide and lists the building at 27 storeys.

Capemay markets Selton Skye as the tallest residential building in Ghana. It says the development will hold 125 apartments and is now scheduled for completion in the first quarter of 2028. That is more than a year later than the end-2026 date the company gave when it unveiled the project.

Apartments priced in dollars

Selton Skye stands on the George W. Bush Highway in North Dzorwulu, one of Accra's main business corridors, about 10 minutes from Kotoka International Airport. Capemay's sales materials list Tullow Oil, Deloitte and the 355 Towers office complex among its neighbors.

The company's sales brochure prices three-bedroom apartments of between 141.5 and 327.8 square meters from $565,000. Three-bedroom units with staff quarters start at $721,750. At the top of the building sits a single penthouse of about 1,160 square meters. Units are sold on a leasehold basis, in line with Ghanaian land law.

The design is unusual for Accra. The two towers, named Allure and Arancia, sit on a shared two-storey podium and appear to be pulled apart from each other. One steps back as it rises, creating terraces, while the other leans out over those terraces to shade them, the council said.

Planned amenities include a sky pool, a cinema, a gym, co-working spaces, a grocery store, a pharmacy and a restaurant opening onto a courtyard. Some floors are set aside for short-term stays, aimed at business travelers working in the offices around the building.

The money behind Capemay

The capital behind Capemay comes from Kasapreko, the company Adjei started in the late 1980s in a garage in Nungua, a suburb of Accra, with five employees. It grew around Alomo Bitters, a herbal alcoholic drink that became one of the best-selling spirits in West Africa.

Kasapreko's revenue rose to 3.5 billion cedis in 2025, from 660 million cedis in 2020, and it earned 341.8 million cedis after tax last year. In June, the company listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange after an initial public offering that drew bids of more than double its 700 million cedi target.

The Adjei family still controls the business. It owns 3.55 billion shares, or 85.88% of the company, through Pinnacle Holding Company Limited, which is owned in equal parts by five members of the family: Abigail, Emelia, Eunice, Isaac and Richard Adjei. Richard Adjei, the founder's son, is Kasapreko's managing director. Kwabena Adjei does not appear on the shareholder register himself.

At Thursday's closing price of 1.84 cedis, the family's stake was worth about 6.53 billion cedis, or roughly $560 million, according to Billionaires.Africa calculations.

Adjei, a former national chairman of Ghana's National Democratic Congress, remains the founder and group chairman of both Kasapreko and Capemay. Capemay is run day to day by its chief executive, Eunice Adjei-Bonsu, who spent 10 years at Kasapreko before taking the job.

The Signature: two towers that made its name

Before Selton Skye, Capemay's best-known project was The Signature, two high-rise towers in Shiashie, East Legon, overlooking the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange and the Accra Mall.

Adjei launched the project at the Kempinski Gold Coast City Hotel in December 2018, presenting it as a development of 209 apartments. He said the goal was to give Ghana's growing middle class quality homes that would also earn their owners rental income. Italian construction group Micheletti was hired to build it, and Bosch was brought in to supply the appliances.

The towers were supposed to be finished in the first quarter of 2021. Capemay completed them in 2022, a delay of about a year.

The building now works almost as a small town. Residents have a rooftop pool, a sky lounge, a gym, a tennis court, a cinema, a bowling alley, restaurants, a pharmacy and a grocery store. Units range from one-bedroom apartments to penthouses and duplexes, and Capemay rents some out for short stays at between $140 and $8,000 a night. The towers now also serve as the company's sales center for Selton Skye.

Offices, a gated estate and a slower start

Capemay's early projects were far more modest. Its first was Amenfi Plaza, an office block on Spintex Road in Accra completed in 2010, with 4,889 square meters of floor space. Capemay describes it as a six-storey building, while property data firm Estate Intel lists it as five storeys. The company still runs its headquarters from the building's fifth floor.

A year later, it finished Nicholas Plaza, an office building in Tema, the port city east of Accra. It also developed Kasa Global, a gated residential community, and is now selling plots and townhouses at Park Ridge Estate, a gated community in East Airport near the Palace Mall. When Estate Intel first recorded Park Ridge in 2021, it listed 93 units, with four-bedroom homes priced at about 5.05 million cedis each.

A bet on Accra's top end

Capemay is privately held and does not publish its accounts, so the size of the business behind these buildings is not public. Its projects show a company that has moved steadily up the market, from mid-range office blocks to some of the most expensive apartments in Ghana.

Selton Skye is its biggest bet yet. Prices are set in dollars, the building rises higher than anything Capemay has attempted, and its target buyers are expatriates, corporate tenants and wealthy Ghanaians at home and abroad.

The delays at both The Signature and Selton Skye show how hard large construction projects in Accra can be to deliver on schedule. With foundations in the ground and a 2028 target, Selton Skye now has to stay on its new timetable.